


The Only Way Around the Wound (Let Your Eyes Adjust)

by hnathe (vesuviusPrivateer)



Series: Friends at the Table Femslash Week 2019 [1]
Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Canon character deaths, F/F, FatT Femslash Week, FatT Femslash Week 2019, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 07:27:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19329898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vesuviusPrivateer/pseuds/hnathe
Summary: Friends at the Table Femslash Week 2019, Day One: SunriseAria looks back at the window, and absently realizes that this is her first terrestrial sunrise since Rigour.





	The Only Way Around the Wound (Let Your Eyes Adjust)

There's something warm on Aria's face, not touching it, but heating it up regardless. Something bright is pressing up against her eyelids, and she strains and squeezes her eyes as if they could be more shut than they are, to block out that brightness that refuses to go away. Half-asleep still, she makes a vain effort to pull the sheets over her head, but something pulls them back away from her, and she hears a sleepy, grumbling voice behind her. A few moments of pointless resistance later, Aria lets her body go limp, and carefully blinks open one eye, then the other, squinting at the annoyance across the room: the window, blinds left up and letting the full morning sun intrude into her bedroom.

Aria blinks a few more times, and reaches up a hand to rub the sleep from her eyes. She sits up, and her back whines with the action, so she gives it a quick stretch before looking down at the other occupant of her messy bed, who has quickly wrapped herself up in _all_ of the sheets and looks perfectly undisturbed by the intrusive sunlight. Aria's shoulders droop. Jacqui has always been a light sleeper, but Aria has been watching the exhaustion on her face for what seems like ages, but has really barely been a week. Since. . .

Aria looks back at the window, and absently realizes that this is her first terrestrial sunrise since Rigour.

With both the irresistible drive and stiffness of an auto-pilot routine, Aria pushes herself up, out of bed, and takes the four, five steps to the window. In reality, the sun isn't that bright this morning, by Counter/Weight standards. Perhaps it's just that she's been in space for so long, only stumbling into hers and Jacqui's shared apartment and immediately into bed last night after a long, grueling, and precarious campaign of attack in the sea of stars hiding behind the clouds above. Before, the sun like the stationary floor beneath her feet would have been a comfort, a reminder that she was home, and she could take off the mantle of leadership, of bravery, of Righteousness that weighed heavy on her shoulders every moment in the vast expanse above the atmosphere.

Right now, though, the sun's presence serves only as a reminder of what has been lost. Of her last conversation with her dear friend. Of the look on their face when she admitted that she didn't share their conviction, their courage. Of not being able to explain to them _Why_ , even though Aria knows that there is no world in which she could have made a different choice.

And maybe it isn't fair to this star. It isn't the one that became the final resting place of the battle's great martyr.

Aria tugs down on the blinds, until the room is dark and cool again. The sun will have to get over it; nothing about these last few years has been fair to her.

Nothing, except. . .

With quiet, careful steps, Aria makes her way back to her bed, and hesitates at the edge. She places her hand on the mattress for a moment, but straightens her back and tip-toes around to kneel at the other side instead. Jacqui squeezes a pillow to her chest, sheets clutched in her unbreakable grip. Her hair is wild from tossing and squirming in her sleep, an inch of green roots sharply shifting to violet. Aria thinks to herself that she should help Jacqui touch those up soon, they have time now, as she reaches a hand down to carefully brush violet and green back from Jacqui's sleeping face.

Jacqui leans into the touch, a sigh and the creaking of the mattress breaking the silence of the room. The breath in Aria's throat stops, her eyes sting even without the bright burn of sunlight, and a deep, familiar ache she had firmly pushed down through months of loneliness makes itself known again. She slides her hand down to cradle Jacqui's cheek, and the warm touch of her skin is almost not enough to convince Aria that her heart is whole, and that Jacqui is truly here.

Brown eyes squint, then slowly open.

"Aria . . .?"

Jacqui's voice is just above a whisper; raspy with sleep, and heavy with tenderness. Her eyes search Aria's face with concern, and Aria chokes. A sob heaves up from her chest and forces its way through her throat, and Aria finds herself gasping for air as her other hand reaches irresistibly for the other side of Jacqui's face, holding her where Aria can't possibly lose sight of her again.

"Hey, whoa," Jacqui sits up, reaches her own hands down to guide Aria up, back onto the mattress and against her chest as Aria kicks her legs uselessly in her attempt to climb up on her own. Aria clings to Jacqui, shaking, sobbing nonsense words into her collarbone as the cool metal of Jacqui's hand rubs circles into her back, and Jacqui's voice whispers consolations that Aria can barely comprehend. "Shhh, hey. Baby, it's alright. It's alright. I'm here."

"P-promise? You promise?" Aria sobs, and she can't even bring herself to feel embarrassed by how childish she must sound. "You're here? You're staying here?"

"Of course I am," Jacqui whispers fiercely, pulling Aria tighter against her. "You couldn't _make_ me leave you, Precious Bell. I'm here. I'm staying here."

Aria tries to wriggle away from Jacqui's chest to look at her face, and it takes a minute for Jacqui to loosen her grip and let her. Aria gulps down another sob, reaching her hands up to touch as much of Jacqui as she can, and Jacqui waits quietly for Aria to find what she needs. Aria can see in her eyes the kind of calm that only comes with the exhaustion of grief, and that almost slams her back down into inconsolable tears, but she makes herself gasp down deep breaths until she's able to speak again.

"I'm so. . . sorry. I should've-"

"Don't worry about that now-"

"I know, she- she-"

"Don't- Not right now. Not right now."

"Please stay with me," Aria whispers, and Jacqui presses kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, her lips, the crown of her head, wherever she can reach, in response.

"I will. You stay with me, too." She says, and there's a shake to her voice that claws at Aria's heart.

"I will. I will, I will, I will, I-" she swears, trying her damnedest to match Jacqui kiss for kiss between each promise until she is pulled tightly against Jacqui's chest once more.

Of course she will. She would swear it a thousand times if she could. She knows it in her bones--has known it for years. She knows it with a conviction that no force, no army, no god could shake: There is nothing in this world, or any other, that Aria Joie could ever trade for Jacqui Green.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Immaculate Machine's "Blinding Light".  
> Woo! It's finally femslash week again! I'm so pumped and gay.


End file.
